'Ordinary Mind', artist talk at MIA, 11 Feb 2011

On my trip back to Kuala Lumpur between Jan and Feb 2011, an artist talk entitled ‘Ordinary Mind’ was organised for the students and lecturers at Malaysian Institute of Art (my former art college). Attended by around 30 people, the talk discussed my studio practice that led to my PhD research. It presented a body of work that I produced in the UK since 2000 follows by an open discussion.

From left: Ms Lo Bee Eng (president) and Mr Liew Soo Wong (head of Fine Art)

Imagining Food Experience - 9 November 2010

Venue: Room CR6-22a to CR6-22c, 6th Floor,

Commercial Road Building, London Metropolita University
Serving: 12.00pm – 1.30pm

Table setting Image by F. Zampollo

In July 2010, I was invited by Francesca Zampollo to create a special lunch event for the 1st International Symposium of Food Experience Design, a symposium she organised with Chris Smith as a result of her ongoing interest and research on food experience. “We don't want the lunch in this symposium to be boring... We want it to be nothing like the usual "conference food". This is a symposium that talks about food design and food experience, therefore we would like to do something special. Why not Art?” said Francesca.

Table Setting. Image by F. Zampollo

I respond with a proposal called ‘Bon Appetite!’ but later changed the title to ‘Imagining Food Experience’ that interacted with the title of the symposium. The event organised and conceptualized in responds to the symposium where it examines the “emerging discipline of Food Experience Design”. It seeks to connect two key features from the symposium: firstly, the manifestation of food designed for our eating experience. Secondly, a speaker panel and attendees from different nationalities and diverse cultural backgrounds that are interested in the development of food.

Table setting. Image by D. Plaxton

In advance to the symposium, the registered attendees were asked: ‘What is the food ingredient that you think most represents yourself and/or your culture?’ Using recipes from my own culture, creation and experience; a selection of the suggested food ingredients, as the result of the question, are cooked into a few experimental dishes to serve as the conference’s lunch. All the recipes for the lunch event were published in a leaflet folded into a chopstick envelope shape inserted with a pair of chopsticks. A long communal table is custom made for the attendees to enjoy their lunch together and exchange conversation. The chopstick together with the leaflet were on display on the dining table during the lunch event and available for the attendees take away. (The leaflet is now available to download here).

Setting up the event. Image by D. Plaxton

Apart from advance food design using modern technology, cultural crossover in food is becoming a prominent feature in contemporary everyday life. Imagining Food Experience engages the idea of globalization and cultural plurality in food, cooking and eating. The piece observes, blends and plays with food ingredients and recipes from different countries and cultures to create new forms. It provides an opportunity for the attendees to expand their conversation about this environment from the symposium room to the dining table. The piece also embraces the spirit of sharing and exchanging through engaging people to share a meal by sitting together in a communal table. It also allows them to enter and expand work of art by tasting it and taking it away to share with others. The lunch event was attended by approximately 90 people.

Attendees help themselves with food. Image by D. Plaxton

Ingredients suggested by the participants:

1. Tomato and bread - Marta Salvá 2. Pasta - Martyn Richmond 3. Spice paste (onion, coriander seed powder, chilli powder, Tamarind, Cumin seeds and Tomatoes) - Manuel Tim 4. Ouzo - Loannis Pantelidis 5. Kendal Mint Cake - Sophia Nicholson 6. Turmeric powder - Vikas Wadhwani 7. Fries - Chotima ag-ukrikul 8. Potato - Marie Kent 9. Apple - Irina Labeja 10. Rice - Will Longden 11. Fine Wine - Marianne Forrest 12. Field Mushroom - Brent Richards 13. Potato - John Edwards 14. Olive oil - Tiago Ferreira 15. Squared pasta - Fabio Parasecoli 16. Cinnamon & Salt - Dominique Lucas 17. Brain as part ofpork or veal - Martin Hablesreiter 18. Pasta and Pizza - Stefania Bilotta 19. Sugar – Mah Rana 20. Chocolate - Julie Beattie 21. Porridge – Danielle Inga 22. Barley - Karen Rumsey 23. Water – Prang L. 24. Soup – Suzie Norris 25. Barley - Neil Fergusion 26. Dark chocolate – Julie Jacoby 27. Potato – Cathy O’donnell 28. Onion – Marija Prytkova 29. Fish - Helga Björg Jónasardóttir 30. Soy sauce – Sawamurai 31. Rice - Synnøve Fredericks 32. Dumpling - Liao Tjhien 33. Milk chocolate with hazelnut - Julie Seutin 34. Milk and vanilla - Ingeborg Flornes 35. Cayenne pepper – James Campbell 36. Rice - Synnøve Fredericks 37. Marjoram and Rosemary - Jarka Hinksman 38. Rye flour - Theresa Digerfeldt-Mansson 39. Palm Kernel oil - Stanley Chukwukelu 40. Rainbow Chard and Matcha (Green Tea) - Rachel Ware 41. Salt – Anna Cerrocchi 42. Salt, meat & Flour - Lisa Pfannhauser 43. Flower water olive oil potatoes onions garlic and spices – Harvey Reehal 44. Olive - Inês Laranjeira

Special thanks to Dennis Plaxton for documenting the event.

Links:

ifooddesign home page

Imagining Food Experience page

Download recipes from the event

Attendees help themselves with the dessert. Images by D. Plaxton

About the Conference Organizer

International Food Design Society
The International Food Design Society aims to promote research, development, and education in the area of Food Design and to support inventive and creative techniques for the Food Design discipline.
In particular the International Food Design society aims to support and encourage the international exchange of information and experience between academics, practitioners, industrial companies, culinary enthusiasts, universities, and other organizations in the area of innovation, creation, and knowledge management.
www.ifooddesign.org

London Metropolitan University, Sir John Cass Department of Art Media & Design
http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/jcamd/home.cfm

Images by D. Plaxton

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Event Co-ordination
Francesca Zampollo
Chris Smith

Special thanks
Loke Sim Loo
Lin Fatt Chan
Hock Seng Hui

Technicians
Peter Hufton
Andy Hills

Photography
Dennis Plaxton
Francesca Zampollo

Graphic Design
Francesca Zampollo

Barely Notice exhibition with Bommsoon Lee, 14 - 30 October 2010

Venue: RSP Planet Design Studios
Address: 17 Dorset Square, London NW1 6QB
Private view: 14 Oct 2010, 6pm – 9pm
Exhibition continues: 15 – 30 Oct 2010, 12pm – 6pm
Outdoor video projection: 6pm – 10pm

RSP Planet Design Studio

Sponsored by RSP Planet Design Studio and Chinese Designers’ Region (CDR),'Barely Notice' is a self-curated exhibition embarked on my interest and of South Koreo artist Bommsoon Lee. The exhibition examines the commonplace: objects, spaces and situations that most people take no notice or show their lack of interest. We respond to both positive and negative spaces of RSP Planet Design studios. The work operates within the concepts of time and space, and recalls a sense of ‘Nothingness'.

Helium Inflated Condom, 2003

Assemblage of Losse Bristles from the Brush that Painted the Wall, 2003

Attentiveness plays the central role in Bommsoon’s art practice, which to seemingly invalid fragments of objects, spaces and situations of everyday, and that enters selected tradition, ideological premise, or institutionalized orthodoxy for analysis. However the body of her work emphasises the indeterminacy or potentiality, often drawing from the line of the absurd and humour and remains within those moments where a decision or resolution has not yet been reached.

Love in 90 Degree, 2010

In the exhibition, Bommsoon presents narrative sound, site-specific installations and drawings inviting viewers to the less attended. She said, “Working in a range of media including drawing, object-making, installation, lens-based media and writing, my practice, at its heart, questions the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of the world external to oneself.”

Labelling Tags Attached to a Clothing, 2003

Devoting attentiveness to the everyday is central to my studio practice. The everyday that I refer to is the commonplace and trivial: objects and activities that for most people, maintain no great significance. I am interested in the artefacts and processes neglected or taken for granted. I am interested in the as‐it‐is‐ness and impermanence of things: the interconnectedness between objects and people and how these things recall memories, mindfulness, and ideas surrounding the self. My work aims to reify the trivial and discarded, providing opportunities for the viewer to re‐approach these (often overlooked, and) reinvigorated contemporary cultural tomes.

A scene from the exhibition

The Trivia that keep the World Goes Round, 2010

In the exhibition, Bommsoon presented her 'She is Waiting for the Right Moment', 'Nothing Here Right Now' and a two parts sound and video projection piece 'Searching: a Girl at the End of Puberty'. I presented 2 pieces of new works include 'The Trivia that Keeps the World Goes Round' and 'Love in 90 Degree' and 3 pieces of my existing works include 'Condom Infalted with Helium', 'Labelling Tags Attached to a Clothing' and 'Assemblage of Loosed Bristles from the Brush that Painted the Wall'.

The Trivia that Keep the World Goes Round (close-up views)

Both our works inspired by and physically derived from the objects, spaces and situations that are evident in our immediate environment. They reclaim the potential of the less attended and transform them into artistic forms for re-examination and contemplation. The work interacts with and assimilates the things and the structure of the space that concealed in the horizon of the everyday most of us barely notice.

Please follow this link for further information: http://www.barelynotice.blogspot.com/

The Trivia that Keep the World Goes Round (close-up views)

Private/Public at Gallery 320, 20 - 25 Sep 2010

The cover for the invitation card. Image by: Ting-Ting Cheng

In July 2010, I came across the information of ‘call for submission’ for Private/Public exhibition and met Ting-Ting Cheng, artist and the curator for the exhibition. Tingting works with photography, and use everyday objects as the subject for her images. For example, in her ‘Invisible’ piece, she picked up discarded objects from the streets, placed them on the plinth and photographed them. Her practice “focus[es] on the relationship between objects, places and people’s emotion toward them” and “celebrates the banality of everyday life”.

At the entrance of the gallery

Private/Public was a group exhibition “scrutinizes the idea of domestic place in our everyday life”, and explores the concept of private space in public gallery context. Twelve artists including Hannah Forbes Black, Ting-Ting Cheng, Yin-Hua Chu, Sarah Churlish, Gerard Cuartero, Milena Galli, Denise Hickey, Steve Hines, Sule Kemanci, Katherine Lubar, Clare Motte and myself, “using various mediums to turn the gallery space into domestic, oscillating between private and public” said Tingting. The exhibition encourages raising questions on: “How does the domestic place mean to us? And what is the relationship between them? How does it reflect our personal history and everyday routine? And, how do artists reveal the residents by exploring the space? Furthermore, when the private becomes public in the contemporary art exhibition, what has been changed?”

A scene from the private view

I presented ‘Every Corner of my Flat’ for the exhibition, the piece inspired by the dust accumulates in my living space. Started in 2009 and ongoing, I use photography to document the process when I clear the dust, they are being rolled into a ball shape and continue to grow. The process provides a chance for me to scrutiny more intensely about my own living space. Along the way I observe, familiarize and recollect myself when going through my belongings.

'Every Corner of my Flat' in the exhibition. Image by Tingting Cheng.

'Every Corner of the Flat' (Archived image from Strange/Familiar exhibition)

The piece motivated by the relationship between objects, spaces, man and his behaviour and examines how they influence each other, it reflects how a space affects its inhabitant and the way we arrange our inhabit spaces to suit our needs. It is one of many potentials to ‘draw a portrait’ of a person, or to describe the character in his habitant space. The endless repetitive and accumulative activities manifest a sense of infinity and meditative quality that reflects in some of my work. In a separate thought, dust reminds me of two Buddhist poems:

The body is the Bodhi Tree;
The mind is like a bright mirror standing.
Take care to wipe it all the time,
And allow no dust to cling.
Shen Hsiu

There never was a Bodhi Tree
Nor bright mirror standing.
Fundamentally, not one thing exists,
So where is the dust to cling?
Hui Neng

I am Solitary I am an Army, 31 Aug – 11 Sep 2010

Image from the invitation card

“The approach for the exhibition was to remove expectancy away from work dealing with an exclusively figurative approach to the exhibition’s theme; as a result, the work in I Am Solitary encompasses a more conceptual and abstract understanding of ideas around ‘identity’ and ‘individuality’. The works included comment on the relation to the individualistic moment of creation, the solitary subject, the remote instance, or even the viewer’s relationship to the work.” Beer Lambert contemporary

Entrance to the exhibition

Invited by Surface gallery in Nottingham, Beers Lambert curated ‘I am Solitary I am an Army’, an exhibition of “emergent contemporary art”. The 20 artists features in the exhibition were from over 13 different countries including Turkey, Israel, Malaysia, Greece, Australia, South Africa, Canada, the US, and the UK. The exhibition, according to Beers Lambert, “explores current and progressive trends and pathways in international emergent art”, and “each of the artists’ work responds to questions of identity and individuality, and each artist can be seen as shaping the direction of international and contemporary painting, sculpture, video, and photography”.

A scene from the private view

My work ‘Circumratation' was selected for the exhibition, other artists in the exhibition are: Joshua Bilton ● Lindsey Bull ● Tom Butler ● Dionisis Christofilogiannis ● BJ & Richelle Formento ● Joshua Hagler ● Aaron Head ● David-Ashley Kerr ● Grace Kim ● Carla Liesching ● Tom Nolan ● Sarah Pager ● Charlie Penrose ● Andrew Salgado ● Yael Schmidt ● Lyndsey Searle ● Berndnaut Smilde ● David A Smith

My work'Circumrotation' in the exhibition

'Circumrotation' initially took part in ‘The Affluenza Exhibition’ in 2009; that responded to Oliver James’s book called ‘Affluenza’. James argued that the recent financial crisis is the consequence of materialism and people’s dogged pursuit of external gains. The piece explores a sense of ‘trapped’ in human living conditions. On one hand, it responds to the life of many who imprisoned themselves in persuading power, wealth, or possession unaware that they trapped in a circle which has no beginning and no end, and no sense of first and last. On the other hand, it portrays people and things are interconnected that life revolves in causality, what goes round comes around.

Another scene fom the private view

Beers Lambert Contemporary Art was founded in Vancouver, Canada with the intention of supporting and advancing the careers of exceptionally talented young artists. They currently operate out of Vancouver; London, England; and Berlin, Germany, representing some of the most talented emerging artists from around the world.

Works by other artists


A cataogue was published for the exhibition. The dsign of the cover.

Artsdepot Open 2010, 23 Jul - 5 Sep 2010

Image by: Artdepot

artsdepot is at the heart of Tally Ho Corner in North Finchley, the art centre was conceived by the local community in 1996 through a conference called Barnet 2000. What emerged from that conference was an overwhelming need for more professional arts facilities in Barnet. The London Borough of Barnet then put the project in motion and teamed up with developers Taylor Woodrow and The Bull Arts Centre to develop plans for North Finchley’s regeneration and what was to become artsdepot. The art centre which includes a gallery called Arthorp Gallery, was opened to the public for the first time on Saturday 23 October 2004.

artsdepot Open is suggested as “a vibrant exhibition showcasing some of the best visual art talent around” and “an annual celebration of creativity”. It was in its sixth year returns to the Arthorp Gallery in 2010, and shortlisted artist include: Helen Maria Alveranga, Katja Angeli, Trevor Atwood, Patricia Bidi, Leszek Blyszczynski, Joo-hee Chun, Anthony Day, Jacob Eiseman-Renyard, Susan Eyre, Jamie Gordon, Veronica Grassi, Richard Greaves, Andrew Hladky, Jane Boyett Judd, Nick Judd, Myra Lawson, Paola Leonardi, Jane Lushy, Helen Michael, Sasha Morris, Alice Peillon, Paul Regan, Jacqueline Rudd, Flora Teh-Morris and David Waller, Celestine Thomas, Ian Thomson, Richard Treister, Taymaz Valley, Ben Walker, David T Waller, Christine Watson.

Initially my works ‘Circumrotation’ and ‘Whole, Semi and Skimmed’ were selected for the exhibition. However, due to space limitation and technical difficulties, the curator and her team decided to show the latter. ‘Whole, Semi and Skimmed’ was originally commissioned by Brent Artists Resources for Respect Art Festival 2009. It uses solely plastic milk bottles from one of the Brent’s recycling centre to construct into a flock of sheep. The piece took courage from remembering the toys I used to make when I was a child; it embraces mixed elements of build, play and time. It suggests a light-hearted aspect of art making and a meditative process of creation and recreation. It relates object with environment and demonstrates one of the many sustainable possibilities by rejuvenating the discarded into something ambiguous for appreciation.The following images are the documentation from the exhibition.

Image by: Chong Boon Pok Copyright: Chong Boon Pok